Work Text:
Riddles
Debbie didn’t care that Ian and Mickey were a package deal now. She was just happy that her brother was back. Despite Lip and Fiona’s negative attitude towards Mickey, she knew he was good for Ian. He loved her brother and she was sure he would do anything to keep Ian safe and healthy.
It started over the breakfast table one morning. Debbie hadn’t finished her homework from the night before because she’d been up texting Holly about the new boy in their class. She was almost done with her English assignment when she got to the last question and saw that there was a bonus riddle at the bottom, for extra credit.
How quickly can you find out what is unusual about this paragraph? It looks so ordinary that you would think that nothing is wrong with it at all‒and, in fact, nothing is. But it is a bit odd. Why? If you study it and think about it, you may find out, but I am not going to assist you in any way. You must do it without any coaching. No doubt, if you work at it for long, it will dawn on you. Who knows?
She stared at it for a good minute, dumbfounded. She was tempted to forget about it entirely and just go to school with what she’d already written, but she had a feeling her answers to the rest of the questions were crap. The extra ten points would probably mean the difference between passing and failing.
With a hopeless huff, she turned to her brother for help. “Ian, can you take a look at this? I’ve read it over and over and I can’t figure it out.”
Ian reached over, took the paper out of her hands and read it while eating his Poptart. “I have no idea, Debs. Riddles aren’t my thing. You should text it to Lip at school; I’m sure he’ll be able to figure it out.”
Mickey leaned over Ian’s shoulder and topped off her brother’s coffee mug without being asked to. “It’s a lipogram,” he said to her, eying the paper still in Ian’s hands. “There’s no ‘E’.”
Ian barked out a laugh. “That’s not a real thing!”
Mickey’s eyebrows arched up defensively at Ian’s reaction. “You callin’ me a liar?”
“What’s a lipogram?” Debbie cut in before the guys could argue any more.
“It’s when you write something without using a specific letter,” Mickey explained.
Debbie grabbed her homework out of Ian’s hands and read the paragraph over again. Mickey was right: there were no “E”s anywhere in it. “You’re right!” She quickly wrote in the answer at the bottom of the page.
“How the hell did you know that?” Ian asked Mickey with a touch of awe in his voice. The older boy shrugged and took his seat at the table, grabbing her brother’s half-eaten Poptart in the process.
“Just because I didn’t finish high school doesn’t mean I’m an idiot, Gallagher…”
Debbie didn’t have time to stay and listen to them. She stuffed her homework a folder in her backpack and downed her orange juice in five seconds flat. “Gotta go! Thanks Mickey!”
“Whatever…” the brunette muttered to her in reply as she ran out the door.
~ ~ ~
“Good job, Debbie,” Mrs. Heath said as she passed back the previous day’s assignments.
Holly leaned over and eyed the red “+10” on the top right corner of Debbie’s paper. “How the hell did you get the extra credit question?” the blonde asked.
“Did we even learn that in class?” Ellie chimed in.
Debbie shrugged, hoping her friends wouldn’t notice the blush creeping onto her cheeks.
~ ~ ~
That night, Debbie couldn’t wait for Mickey and Ian to get in. She had another extra credit riddle that had her stumped, but she had a gut feeling that Mickey would know the answer again. There was no way she was gonna pass up the opportunity of getting free points.
Fiona brought dinner back with her from the work‒a perk of working at the diner‒and Ian came home with Mickey in tow about fifteen minutes into the meal. They both grabbed clean plates from the cabinet and helped themselves to a generous portion.
“This looks great, Fi,” Ian said enthusiastically as he took a seat beside Debbie.
She swallowed her bite. “Mickey, you were right about that riddle.”
“I know,” he said casually, without even an ounce of modesty.
“What riddle?” Fiona wanted to know.
“My annoying English teacher has started putting extra credit riddles at the bottom of our homework sheets. I had no idea what today’s answer was but Mickey figured it out in like ten seconds flat,” she explained.
“I told her to ask Lip but Mickey already solved it,” Ian added.
“Mickey’s smart?” Carl asked with his mouth full.
“Ay, fuck you!” Mickey spat, rightly offended. “I know more than your retarded ass!”
“ Language! ” Fiona, Ian and Debbie said at the same time, all three looking worriedly at Liam, Fiona with added guilt. Liam was getting to that age where he would repeat everything he heard, appropriate or not. Debbie felt a pang of worry for her baby brother at Mickey’s use of the word ‘retarded’ but quickly brushed it off. So far Liam wasn’t showing any signs of lingering brain damage.
“ Anyway ,” Debbie drawled, “we got another bonus riddle for tonight’s homework. Think you can take a stab at it?” she asked Mickey.
“Why don’t you try it yourself first, Debs?” Fiona suggested.
Debbie gave her sister an annoyed look. “I did, and it doesn’t make sense. It looks like a math riddle to me, and I suck at everything to do with numbers.”
She pulled the folded piece of paper out of her pocket and read the question aloud: “What is special about the following sequence? 8, 5, 4, 9, 1, 7, 6, 10, 3, 2 and 0.”
She looked up at her family and saw that they all looked confused. “Let me see that,” Fiona said, holding her hand out for the sheet. Debbie wordlessly gave it to Carl who passed it to their sister, but not before getting his dirty fingerprints all over its edges.
Fiona stared at the numbers with a frown, eventually shrugging and passing the paper across the table to Ian. He took a look as well, but then shook his head in defeat.
They all turned to Mickey. “You think you can solve it?” Ian asked the older boy.
Mickey snatched the paper out of the redhead’s hands and took a look. He bit his bottom lip, his teeth leaving a little white line where they pressed into his skin. Then he did something no one expected: he smiled.
“The numbers are in alphabetical order,” came his answer‒short and to the point.
“What?” Fiona took the paper and inspected the riddle again. “Shit, I think he’s right. Eight, five, four, nine, one, seven, six, ten, three, two and zero. It makes sense...”
Sure enough, when Debbie studied the sequence, she realized Mickey had to be right. It was the only explanation for why a riddle with numbers was extra credit for an English assignment. She wrote the answer down the moment she got upstairs, and was thrilled when she got another compliment from her teacher the following day.
~ ~ ~
After that, it became a thing . Each night, they would look forward to asking Mickey a riddle over dinner, on the off chance that maybe, one night, he would actually get stumped.
Night after night, Mickey proved to be more clever than anyone ever gave him credit for. Even if it took him a while, he eventually figured them out. They asked him riddles of all kinds: math riddles, what am I’s, funny riddles, even logic ones, and he was always able to solve them.
On nights when Debbie didn’t have any homework riddles, she and Carl would look them up online, searching for the hardest ones in order to trip Mickey up.
Fiona even joined in. “Okay,” she said, setting bringing the bowl of mac ‘n’ cheese to the kitchen table. “I got this one from my boss. Carl, get six glasses and the bottle of Pepsi that’s in the fridge.”
Fiona waited for Carl to bring her the requested items before placing them in a row on the table in front of Mickey. Debbie watched as her sister carefully poured soda into the first three cups.
“ By moving only one glass, can you arrange the empty and full glasses so that they alternate?” she challenged the brunette.
Mickey sat with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the row of cups.
“Move that one to the beginning,” Carl said, pointing at the fifth cup in the sequence..
Debbie swatted his hand away quickly. “Don’t help him!”
“That won’t do anything,” Ian said with a quick shake of his head to Carl. “The three full cups would all still be next to each other.”
Debbie noticed that Fiona had the biggest smile on her face, and for a moment, thought that Mickey’s streak had finally come to an end… until Mickey uncrossed his arms, leaned forward, picked up the second glass, and poured its contents into the fifth glass.
“S’that the best ya got?” Mickey taunted.
The Gallaghers were all stunned.
~ ~ ~
A couple of weeks later, Lip came home for dinner, and brought his college girlfriend, Amanda, with him. It had been a while since the Gallaghers had had cafeteria lasagna for dinner, but Lip had insisted that he bring the meal this time.
“It’s the least I can do. I know I’ve been M.I.A. lately,” he apologized. “Last time I was over was that night your parents came to dinner, when Carl’s girlfriend brought all of her brothers and sisters over. Remember, when the social worker showed up?” he asked Amanda.
She nodded. “How could I forget?” she answered, playfully pushing against Lip’s shoulder with her own.
Debbie put a hand on Carl’s arm, knowing that Bonnie was still a sore subject for her little brother. He shrugged her off but Debbie knew it wasn’t done maliciously.
Carl’s expression suddenly changed from dismal to excited. “Oh!” he yelled, startling almost everyone at the table. “I found an awesome riddle online!”
“A riddle?” Lip questioned, looking from their younger brother to the rest of the family in confusion. “Since when does Carl like riddles?”
“ It’s for Mickey ,” Carl said, as if that explained everything, but by the look on Lip’s face, it didn’t clarify anything .
“It’s our new dinner tradition,” Fiona told Lip and Amanda. “It’s been almost a month and none of us have been able to stump him yet.”
“Seriously?” Lip said, looking at Mickey dubiously.
“Yeah,” Debbie deadpanned, not getting why her oldest brother was being so weird. “My English teacher started putting extra credit riddles at the end of our homework assignments, and Mickey’s gotten every single one of them right.”
“ And, ” Fiona picked up the explanation, “we’ve been finding our own riddles for him on days that Debbie doesn’t get any from school.” She looked over at Mickey and gave him a supportive smile. “Ian picked a good one.”
Mickey cringed, but Debbie could see both her brother and his boyfriend‒at this point, anyone who doubted that they were a couple was blind‒blush slightly.
“ Come on…” Lip said, looking around the table for support. “You guys are telling me that Mickey Milkovich is good at solving riddles?”
Ian cleared his throat. “I bet he’s better than you,” he said defensively. “In fact, let’s make a real bet on it. Loser does all the dishes tonight.”
“Ian, you don’t even know the question yet,” Mickey said under his breath, scratching his chin with the back of his hand like he always did when he was nervous.
“Doesn’t matter,” Ian replied confidently. “I know you’ll solve it.”
Lip was having trouble keeping his smile in check. “This is gonna be the easiest bet ever,” he said to his girlfriend. “Go on, Carl. Ask your riddle.”
Carl got out the post-it he’d written the joke on from his back pocket. “Okay. A 10 foot rope ladder hangs over the side of a boat with the bottom rung at the surface of the water. There is one foot between rungs and the tide goes up at the rate of 6 inches per hour. How long until three rungs are covered?”
“Oh, come on. That’s it? That’s your big riddle?” Lip looked around, waiting for Mickey to offer his answer. When the thug remained silent, Lip’s grin grew, stretching from ear to ear. “Four hours.”
Debbie frowned, worried that her brother had actually beaten Mickey to the right answer, effectively ending the perfect streak.
“Wrong!” Carl shouted with glee.
“No it’s not. It’s four. It would be six, but the first rung is already in the water.”
Carl shook his head adamantly. “Still wrong.”
“ I’m not wrong , Carl. I’m an engineering major.” When all Carl did was shake his head, Lip got visibly frustrated. “Babe, you got a pen?” he asked Amanda.
His girlfriend reached into her bag and produced a pen instantly. Lip wasn’t kidding when he said she was always prepared…
Lip took his used napkin and turned it over to the less-stained side and began drawing a diagram. “Look, here’s the boat, here’s the ladder, and here are the rungs.” He drew little squiggles for the water and Debbie leaned in closer to watch his explanation. “You said each rung is a foot apart, so it takes two hours for the water to cover each rung. There are only two more to go, since the first one’s on the water, so that means four hours.”
“Sorry, Lip,” Carl told him, “but that’s not right.”
“What the hell, Carl? I drew it out for you. It’s right here!” he heatedly rapped on the napkin with the end of the pen. “How can it not be the right answer?”
That was when Mickey started laughing. “Dude, you’re overthinking it…”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Lip demanded.
“ Language! ” the Gallaghers hissed at him, Mickey included this time. Lip quickly glanced at Liam in his highchair and raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“It’s not that complicated, Lip. The answer is never. It’s a boat… When the tide rises, it just floats higher…”
Carl nodded, and Ian let out a victorious whoop. All of the Gallaghers were beaming‒all except Lip, of course. Debbie was so proud of Mickey, but no one was more proud than Ian. Her brother really had picked a smart one.